Kid sidekicks again

I came across a site today with a huge selection of old (and new, I guess) comic book covers, so I spent way too much time today trying to figure out how accurate my impressions of just how useful the old-time kid sidekicks were, were. Granted that I haven't read the inside of these books, and this is going entirely by the covers, I dont think I was too far off.

Robin - sidekick of Batman - Started out being captured fairly regularly (9 out of the first 20 covers he appeared on), but after that it became a less frequent occurance; this possibly has to do with the cover styles, which tended to be more fantastic than most of the old Timely covers I've seen--plenty of giant scissors, floating heads and so forth. Robin always seemed particularly cheerful about his predicament, but of course Batman was always on his way to the rescue.

WWII-era DC books were apparently not particularly topical, and although I've heard about Batman using guns in his early appearances, I didn't see any of that on his covers as you do on the Captain America books--the DC heroes' connection to the war seems mostly to have had to do with selling war bonds.

Bucky - sidekick of Captain America - Out of 66 issues he appeared on, he had been captured in about 1/3. of them. Timely was pretty creative about this--my favorites are #28, where he is waiting to be crushed by a spiked 5000-pond platform, and #62, where he is being lead to the axe by statuesque miniskirted blondes.

Oh, and this interested me--all those complaints I saw last year from folks when the Winter Soldier storyline came out, about how the original Golden Age Bucky's extensive use of weaponry was inaccurate? Starting in early 1943 through the end of the war, just about every cover he was on featured him with a machine gun or a flamethrower. In fact, the only covers where he didn't have some weapon in hand were the ones where he was chained to a wall or otherwise out of commission. It may be that this doesn't reflect the stories inside the covers, I don't know, but I found it surprising.

Toro - sidekick of the original Human Torch - Tied up or otherwise immobilized in about 1/3 of the covers he appears on. For the most part they chain him or put him in an airtight box rather than tying him with rope. Particularly neat was this dynamite-lined plastic capsule.

In just about every instance of a sidekick being captured, the main hero is in the process of rescuing him. Robin is never worried, and apparently has all confidence in his mentor; Toro and Bucky occasionally display a bit of anxiety, but more often they are clearly ready to join the battle as soon as they are freed. I wondered what would be the dynamic here if there were no "adults"--so I looked at some covers of Timely's Young Allies series (a WWII-era book featuring a team of all kids, including Toro, Bucky, and four non-super types, possibly on the theory that the average joes would be easier for the young readers to relate to?). What happens is that the super-powered kids take the role of the older heroes with respect to the other team members--here in the first issue, all of the other kids have been tied up by the Red Skull (and, apparently, Hitler himself, who had nothing better to do in 1941). In fact, out of twenty issues, all but four featured at least some of the non-super kids tied up or otherwise captured. Someone has to be the rescue-ee, I guess. They also--unlike Toro or Bucky--are often armed on these covers, presumably an equalizer to put them more on a level with the powered kids. (Yes, I know Bucky didn't have any super powers per se.)